


Beyond the Gate

by jaythewriter



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Gen, M/M, Spoilers for Entries 80 and beyond, minecraft au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1986909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaythewriter/pseuds/jaythewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim isolates himself as far away from civilization as he possibly can and finds himself in a new world where he must fend for himself and build a new life.</p><p>There, he finds somebody he thought he had lost forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. New Land

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for animal harm (for the sake of food AND for not so good reasons), swords, and blood.

Living in the wild is hard at first, and it wasn’t a lightly considered decision either.

But Tim knew he owed it to the world, to keep it safe from what destroyed any and all chances he had at a ‘normal’ life. He had to keep to himself, and he couldn’t take any risks.

That means no jobs, which means no money, and no money for food-- not that he would allow himself to go into any stores and brush fingers with an innocent cashier. No stores, no friends, no apartments… no homes.

So, he filled up his car’s gas tank one last time after posting Entry 87 and drove and drove and drove until there weren’t any more signs advertising rest stops or route numbers sitting at the side of the road. Trees were and still are his only company, all resembling the dark figure that pervades his nightmares to this very day.

He left his car out in the middle of a tree surrounded clearing, puttered out and tank totally drained. It rested in front of a wooden gate that cried when he jostled it open. Since then, he has no idea what’s happened to the old clunker; he can't remember where the gate is anyway, he’s walked for so long. For all he knows, it rotted away from years of rain and nobody to attend to its needs.

Something about that gate, though-- it wasn’t right. The moment he stepped past the boundary it created between the Texan woods and the near grassless field it led to, the air changed and became charged with life. 

Despite that, he’s not seen a single human being up close since he came here.

Convenient, yes, but at times, when he lies awake in the bed he made with his own two hands, it gets to him. He could have stepped off of the Earth altogether and he wouldn’t be surprised. This place, it’s new and beautiful, untouched by human hands and nature left to rule.

Animals appear from thin air here. Tim could journey through the snowcapped mountains near his home one day, and he’ll come back the next week to find cows that weren’t there before. Chickens, pigs, horses, cats, dogs, they roam the land, wild and free, vanishing at will and reappearing anywhere they might like, even inside Tim’s house.

Plants grow at an impossible rate, as though the strangeness of the wildlife wasn’t enough. When Tim gathers up wood for fire and to make his home a bit larger, he leaves and returns the following morning to find that a second tree has sprouted by where he chopped down the original. 

During his first few days alone here, it was hard not to be terrified by the peculiar nature of his surroundings. Such unusual behaviors meant one thing and one thing only to Tim: he wasn’t as alone as he thought.

But-- sleep grabbed him eventually, dragging him down and forcing him to find shelter. For hours upon hours before, he walked, trying to find a spot where there /wasn’t/ a pair of animal eyes staring at him. Exhaustion won out and pulled him into a nook beneath a grassy hill, where water trickling at the edges prevented anything unwelcome from reaching him.

It was the most peaceful sleep he ever had, and upon awakening, all he could think of was finding food.

No thoughts of what could be waiting for him in the shadows. No paranoia. Nothing left over from any nightmares he might have had, though those would return sometime soon and he would learn to live with them.

Now, Tim worries about nothing (because nothing is on his mind) and he is doing well enough (everything is fine).

He has a constant source of food. Killing the animals took a bit of mental work at first; he loathes doing so, but he knows it’s necessary, and he never does it for the sake of pleasure. On days when he finds he can’t even look into the eyes of a chicken without flinching away, he has wild apples saved up in a wooden box stowed underground to keep cold. When that stash runs low, he never has to walk very far to find fallen fruit nestled between dewy grass blades. 

As crude as it is, he does have a home. His little nook provided shelter while he was gathering wood to shave down into planks using sharp rocks and a flip knife he kept for ‘just in case’ purposes. A year of having nothing else to do but build and build led to a small but respectable house being erected in what Tim supposes was a month-- not like he can keep track of time easily out here. It was a single room, but since then, he’s built a second floor that’s likely in need of more support but it’s not like he keeps anything up there anyway. 

It’s a simple life, and he’s kept busy enough that he rarely stops to wonder if this was the best alternative to simply wiping every trace of his essence and identity from the Earth. 

And when he does come to a pause, he takes a look around him, at the place that thrives and shines bright even when the sun is asleep for the night. He may not understand how such a world exists or why it allowed him to come be a part of it, as if it knew of his troubled past and need for a hiding place.

Still.

Lonely as it is, quiet as it is-- He wouldn’t want to miss this. 

\--

Tim made his first blade today.

Gleaming ore sat upon the surface of the rocky canyon that’s beyond the forest from where he first emerged into this impossible world. Chipping it out took until long past sunset, when the chill of the night cooled him down and dried the sweat on the nape of his neck. 

It’s not for catching food or preparing it easily. The knife he originally brought has been perfect for that, especially since the water here is pure and proves useful for cleaning the steel of blood or wood chippings. 

This blade is for the creatures that lurk around his home while the moon is looking down on him. 

They’ve been around since he first arrived here. He never had to face them head on though, not until recently-- they stuck to the tallest grass, unaware of his presence and going about their daily… lives, he supposes would be the appropriate term, though it hardly seems appropriate at all.

At first glance, these creatures could be mistaken for human. Their skin is green as the grass they hide within, providing the perfect camouflage. Nighttime is when they come out to sing their ghastly songs, ghastly groans that stretch out and rattle inside their broken and torn throats. 

Tim can’t figure out what on earth they are, though he has taken to calling them zombies. 

He hasn’t met one face to face as of yet.

But lying awake in bed in an attempt to avoid the nightmares provides him the opportunity to peer in between the wooden planks making up his walls, and he sees the zombies and what they get up to. They move slowly, knees permanently locked and arms constantly in the air. It’s the same spot every night, right beside the lake, as though they are born from the very waters themselves. A circle of dirt shows where they have killed all the grass with their relentless stomping about. Harmless, really-- just a little creepy.

More like a lot, but.

That would be fine, if the night before he found the iron, Tim hadn’t been woken by the agonized shrieks of a lamb.

He sat up, heart stuck somewhere between its normal resting place and his mouth. His first thought was that he had dreamt the sound; it wouldn’t be the first time he had shaken himself back to reality to escape the cries of a dying friend whose face he doesn’t dare to remember. 

But the screams persisted, wordless and animalistic, thus dispelling any worries that someone might have finally found him all the way out here.

The tiniest amount of space within the wall directly beside his bed let Tim take a safe look at what was going on-- and it was as bloody as he expected it to be. There were more zombies than ever, at least over ten of them, surrounding something white and small. 

Tim didn’t sleep at all. He kept expecting to hear slamming fists at the door, or more screams of sheer terror, though neither of those things came to him.

There were no traces of the bloodshed to be found after the attack. Not a bit of wool from the lamb's coat, nor a drop of blood staining the grey dirt in wild patterns.

For all Tim knows, the zombies only chase down animals, and that animal blood is all that they know and crave. 

But they're living closer now, they look at his home knowingly, like they're aware of the life that dwells within.

He isn't having any of that. Tim is not a man to take chances, not after what he's been through.

This blade of his is nothing to lose one's mind over. He shaved down pieces of oak wood until they were smooth and fit snugly into his fist. The iron is rounded thin at one end to fit into the slot he etched into the wooden handle. Sloppy attempts at shaping the softened and melting iron resulted in a sharp edge that would break if he swung with too much force. 

But it's a start- better than running into a zombie with his fists and nothing else.

Right now, Tim is sitting in the silence of his bedroom, the fur blankets soft beneath him. His sole companion comes in the form of a tiny baby chicken he couldn't bear to kill for a quick meal last week. It dances around his feet, weaving in and out, delighted to be alive.

His fluffy friend fails to provide him with much of a distraction though. Sunlight is draining out of the house, slipping out of the cracks and open windows.

The zombies will be awake any time now.

Golden light gradually surrenders beneath the sheet of black the night brings with it.

Tim hears the ravenous monsters before he sees them. Their broken song is louder than ever, falling short of a drawn out scream.

Tim would have gladly left them to their own devices, if their stomping had not grown louder and louder-- and soon he could hear a faint scratching noise at the side of the house. He realized, to his horror, that the green menaces were clawing at the wood, jagged nails capable of breaking through oak and spruce. 

“Hide,” he orders of his yellow fuzzy companion. Though it couldn’t possibly understand what he said to it, the little beast hops into his bed and burrows into the wooly blankets, becoming a small shivering bump that could be overlooked by anybody not looking for a hidden baby chicken.

Sword in hand, Tim gathers up all the air he can in one long inhale, and he pushes aside the rock he has keeping the door from swinging open. Cold air blusters in, spraying his grown out hair behind his head and pulling chilled shivers from his already shaking body.

The moaning from the side of the house momentarily ceases, and for one hopeful moment, Tim thinks that the zombies have moved on.

That is, until one is breathing down the back of his neck, hot and stinking of rotten meat. He turns, lashing out and accomplishing nothing-- the sword misses and embeds itself in his home, cutting a long gash into the side. Beads of warm red roll down his arm, the pain setting in once he lays his eyes upon the wound. He might not have felt the zombie’s attack, but there isn’t any time to dwell upon that. Fists clenched, he punches, and feels the green flesh give way and rip apart.

This humanoid creature opens its unhinged maw wide, though it does not scream or express any pain. Its arms come up, hands that are lacking in the right amount of fingers flexing hungrily for his throat. Tim doesn’t give it the chance to come any closer. His fists cut through its face, again and again, until nothing but torn curtains of skin hang where its eyeless sockets and gnawing mouth once were.

Flopping to the ground, the zombie stills, lifeless, or as lifeless as something like it can be. Tim wants to relax and find all the oxygen that he lost, but the wordless song is growing in volume from behind him and he can’t seem to release his sword from the gash it created fast enough.

It takes a twist of his wrist and the weight of his whole body turning to bring the blade swinging around and slicing through the thin tissue of the nearest zombie’s throat. A friend off to the side stumbles and falls to its knees, crushed by its fallen brother. Tim kicks out, his foot swift and rough against the head of the flailing one. Neck bones snap and crack apart.

Motionless at last, Tim takes a step back, shoulder to the wall, chest heaving.

In, out, in, out, fuck, in.

The last time he held a blade and fought for his life, there were eyes looking back into his, fury upon fear mixing and blending until there was nothing human left to be found, and he saw someone he once called a friend die, die by his /fucking hand/--

And what is that sound, that strange guttural gurgle that could be an animal, though he has never heard any beast make such a noise?

And-- 

It’s inside his home.

The zombies’ song has come to a shattering end, and in its place is the twisted murmuring that’s from where he just emerged. He takes a tight grip upon his blade and lets himself back in, careless in leaving the door flapping about in the wind.

He doesn’t stop to take in the creature that is stooping at his bedside, surrounded by pixel-like particles floating lazily through the air. All he sees is an intruder, and after taking on the zombies, he sees that there is only one way to take care of intruders around here. His blade is lighter than ever when he raises it into the air and, eyes are looking up at him, eyes, greens of the wild ocean weaved into the peaceful blue, familiar, aching, familiar.

The sword clatters upon the floor, chipping at the edges and sending pieces of iron skittering around.

Sitting on its knees before Tim is something-- someone he could never explain, nothing he can assign a name to in the way that he did with the zombies. They were similar to a monster he had heard of before, in the books he read late at night under his sheets, hiding from the real evils.

This something wears a black aura that floats close to its skin, tiny nooks on its body giving him peeks at the pale concealed beneath. The creature is humanoid, humanoid as it can be in owning limbs that stretch an absurdly long length and are as dark as the aura around its head. Stranger still was the little cap atop its head, wisps of soft dark brown puffing out of the sides. 

But what stands out are the eyes that froze Tim and at the same time, dragged him back ten years, tugged by the nape of his neck to a time that he has run far, far away from. 

In the creature’s shaking palms is the baby chick, peeping softly, nuzzling into the fingers surrounding it like it knows it’s in safe hands.

That, that is how Tim knows he’s looking at Jay-- the eyes would have been enough, but the gentleness towards the sweet chick cements it for him, and he drops to his knees, sword forgotten altogether in exchange for embracing arms. 

Jay is cold to the touch, and he doesn’t or maybe cannot speak to Tim. He hesitates at the initial first touch, taking his time to put down the chick.

Still, he reaches both arms around Tim’s neck, lengthened arms halfway down his back, though the man is even smaller against him than before. Thin, tiny, lanky, everything he was in life exaggerated to an absurd degree.

Zombies be damned, strange reappearances be damned, broken swords be damned: all that matters is the man in his arms, down to the very last violet sparkle dancing above the both of their heads.


	2. Mutation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim awakens, newly rejuvenated by the presence of somebody he thought he'd lost forever. That somebody is acting very strangely, though, more so than he's used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for fire (specifically, zombies on fire), blood, and implications of sort-of-cannibalism.

When Tim went to bed the previous night, he did so with an arm looped around the cool body of somebody he never thought he would see again. He’d dozed off before he could stop himself. One moment, he was absorbed in the lively eyes that looked back at him, watching him, a smile hidden in the pools of shimmering color. 

The next moment, he was lost, floating in black space, free of dreams and most important of all, free of nightmares. Even there, lost in the sleepy nothing, he knew he wasn’t alone.

So to wake up and discover that the bed is no longer sagging beneath the weight of a second body, he quickly lost all sense of the peace and relief that he went to sleep with. 

“Jay--”

He jolts up, the sudden movement driving a spike of giddy whirling into his skull, and he meets the floor face first when he attempts to stand. A splinter jabs into his palms when they come out to catch him, but worse yet is the stream of blood that comes jetting out of his nose. 

That’s hardly his first concern, though, especially while he can hear his house whining around him.

Creak, creak, creeeeak- the sound of bending wood sets Tim's pulse off, humming loud in his ears.

His first instinct is to flee. Pushing off of the ground, he turns his eyes to the ceiling, searching for any cracks that might be rippling through. The second floor is surely caving in, that piece of shit floor that doesn’t have anything that could legally be called support, but, but no, the noise isn't coming from over his head. It's outside his door, to the right of it to be exact.

And, just as he takes a cautious step closer to investigate, the wall splits in two places, creating lines that stand parallel to each other. Several dark fingers inch around the lines and tug, the wood creaking louder with each pull.

Tim can't move, frozen in place as he tries to figure out what the hell is happening to his house, and maybe just a little too late he recognizes those fingers, nails pointed and pale skin peeking out of cracks in the black aura...

Finally, the plank gives, and Jay's head appears in the hole that it leaves behind. He looks around at the interior of the simple and tiny room, like it's his first time seeing it.

“J-Jay,” Tim utters his name, drawing his friend’s attention. The man’s eyes squint up as though he’s grinning beneath his aura, and he lifts the plank he tore out of the wall above his head like a trophy. Angry as Tim ought to be since it took him days to fit the walls properly around the front door, he has to smile, too relieved to give a shit. “Yeah, good job, really… really good job.”

Those glowing eyes squint further; Tim wishes he could see how big his smile is.

“Okay, let’s put that back now,” he says, approaching the door to come around and get Jay.

Joyous little gurgles welcome him as he pushes it open and joins Jay in the light given off by the rising sun. Jay remains kneeling on the ground, watching Tim closely. He presents the broken plank to Tim, letting him take it from him. Tossing the plank over his shoulder and into the house for attending to later, he holds out his hand to Jay, offering to help him up.

His fingers stretch towards Tim’s, brushing his nails into his palms-

And his gaze flits over Tim’s shoulder, towards the sun in the distance. 

Reflected in his eyes is a number of dark humanoid shapes, their features blacked out by the great ball of light that stands behind them. Wild flames flutter around their forms, hot orange scarves whipping around in a violent breeze. Tim takes in a sharp breath, his lungs instantly filling up with the stink of burning human flesh. 

(a hospital, burning down around him, blackened rubble surrounding his bare tiny feet and fire shooting up before him, sweat beading on his forehead as he screams for help, someone please, someone, is there anyone left in this place, did they forget about him, please, /please/--)

A shot of white hot adrenaline zips through Tim’s back-- the sword, he has to get the sword, no matter how broken it might be. He ducks away, grabbing out for Jay’s wrist, planning on locking him inside the house away from danger. 

But-- Jay’s arm, it-- what the hell exactly did he do? He didn’t force himself from Tim’s hand but he slid like liquid, he flitted from existence and reformed into existence right at his side, standing upright now and his head is tilting back, way back. Bones ought to be snapping, his spine and neck severing his head completely, but Jay as he is now rebels against anything that Tim knows about the human body.

The black aura that streams across Jay’s body comes to a sudden pause, motionless before Tim’s eyes for the first time. It begins to tear across the face, right where a mouth ought to be, and it stretches out, Jay’s false jaw touching to his chest. 

Tim opens his own mouth, tries to say Jay’s name--

But the noise that explodes from Jay’s newly formed mouth jolts him before he can even think to duck away. Ripples etch across the air near Jay’s head, like his roaring is so powerful that it takes on a physical form. Tim’s ears blow out, and he hits the grass hard, landing on his tailbone. Pain blasts up through his spine and pulls him to curl against the ground, gasping for air. 

He can still hear, but his own breathing seems hollow to him, all wrong. It’s too much like flailing beneath the surface of a lake, trying to drag himself out and being pulled deeper by creatures he can’t see through the murky clouds. The world sounds inside out, but there’s nothing he can do but squirm upon the ground, clutching his head, breathing, breathe, breathe hard as the air grows tight and presses in on his shaking body.

Jay isn’t at his side anymore. He ceased to exist again and filled back into the void he left in his wake, standing before the flaming monsters. 

What Tim sees next is beyond what he can comprehend. He expects to be used to his world falling apart around him, for all the rules and laws to be broken. By now, he doesn’t even think there are any rules left to break. No matter how many times it happens though, it’s as though he’s being punched repeatedly in the stomach, reminded for the one hundredth time yet that he’ll never escape into the normalcy he craves.

And Jay, god, Jay. At least Tim is still human.

Jay can never hope to get a single taste of what normal might be, not anymore.

He closes in on the burning creatures, standing now at the right angle for Tim to see their melting green skin. Zombies. Though flames consume their bodies and melt their paper thin skin down to the bone, the five of them still scrape across the land. They obviously aren’t picky in what it is they go after; animal, human, Jay’s strange form, they want it all between their gnashing needle sharp teeth.

Their teeth mean nothing to Jay. He merely raises an arm, and they all fall, his screeching blasting in waves of absolute power from his mouth and pinning them to the ground. The grass shreds itself into green bits where he steps, and Jay lowers himself down, knees bending and head close to the nearest zombie. His gaping maw closes around its burning head, and that’s when Tim has to look away.

The zombies don’t stand a chance, regardless of their stronger number and the fire that surrounds them. Sickening sounds surround Tim, though he does not lift his eyes from his arm. Flesh being torn from bone, and the squelching of guts slopping out onto the ground, every passing second of this madness could be a full minute of it instead and Tim wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. 

Peculiar as it is, though, the silence that follows is worse than having to listen to the gore. A single split second where everything is too still, and Tim’s heart forgets how to beat-- Jay is gone, Jay jumped from existence and he isn’t coming back this time, he’s too quiet--

He brings himself to look. Jay is there, his face as it was before, no mouth, gone silent. Unlike before when Tim took on the creatures, where there was carnage to be found later upon the ground, there isn’t so much as a smell left in their wake. Not the stink of rotten meat, burnt or otherwise, or even the coppery stench of blood.

Jay is the first to move of the two of them, with Tim stuck both mentally and physically. 

His cheeks are streaked with tears, visible solely from the sunlight. They would be lost against his dark aura otherwise. 

That sends a spike of energy through Tim, enabling him to fight through the pain in his spine and to send him stumbling towards his friend. He loops his arms around the thin-necked man, pulling him into his chest, unable to protect him no matter how much he might want to. What he needed to be protected from has already passed.

As hard as it was to so much as glance at Jay a moment ago, Tim is easily reminded of who it is that he is stuck with here. This strange thing that has taken Jay’s physical form and warped it until it’d be more than inaccurate to truly call him a human being anymore.

But that doesn’t mean Jay isn’t himself beneath there. He can’t fight the instincts that tug at his limbs and drive him to behave in ways that even he obviously can’t understand.

And so Tim keeps calling him by his name, keeps whispering into his ear-- “Jay, Jay, you’re Jay, you’re still here, you’re with me here, Jay.”

There’s no doubt in whether Jay understands him. Yet Jay hangs onto him, his absurd limbs reaching down past his upper back. He rocks against Tim, swaying side to side, soft mutated whines dragging up through his elongated throat. 

Tim lets him cling on tight, for as long as he needs. It’s the least he could give him.


	3. Enderman, End of a Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim cooks up a little gift as a surprise for Jay. But no matter how many gifts he might make for Jay, he knows none of it will make up for all he's done to him in the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for blood, body horror (in the form of a rapidly rotting corpse), and implied self harm in the form of old scars.

Tim spends the fifth week of his and Jay’s time together building on an extension to his bed so that it can more easily fit the both of them. He hammered and screwed and sweated and huffed his way through the project, then sewed and stitched and bled as he crafted a blanket that could drape over two bodies instead of one.

He considered constructing a second bed for Jay, but other than the first night, he never invited Jay into the bed, not verbally. The man climbed in of his own accord, like he thought he belonged there. Not that he’s wrong, but Tim worries about what Jay might think if he separated them. 

Maybe Tim has to admit to himself that he wants Jay there with him. Not just in the house, god, that goes without saying-- Jay is the sole source of company he has now and, well, it’s Jay, /alive/. How he ever came to be here, he has no idea, and Tim isn’t about to question a good thing. He never believed in fate or destiny but he’s never been closer to putting stock in such things. 

But did Tim miss him so much that he has come to crave the nights they spend entwined in one another’s embrace? Does it hold that much value to him that he really went and fixed his bed to ensure they’d always be able to do this?

As he stands before the completed bed, hands on his hips and catching his breath, Tim knows he is kidding himself if he pretends that this isn’t for him as well. 

What was the point in locking up and denying himself any pleasure when he went without it for years, anyway? What better place to indulge than here where they are the only people for miles around?

“Jay!” Tim calls out, his voice carrying out the door. It stands ajar, a breeze flowing through the house and drying the damp beads upon Tim’s forehead. 

The other man emerges from the distance, head popping out from behind a strip of long grass quivering in the wind. Jay’s image shudders, the aura upon his face stretching out, and with the quickest of gasps, he bursts into existence before the door. Tim is trying to get used to that, though it’s a little annoying when he does it to escape Tim’s scolding glare after he tears a hole into the house. 

“You wanna see what I’ve been working on all day?” he asks, though it appears Jay has already figured out what’s going on. He drifts past Tim, the baby blue sparks that trail behind him increasing in number. They flutter about his head, trembling with delight. Jay takes the blanket and admires it, rubbing his thumb along the material, soft and fuzzy. He ‘wops’, as Tim has come to call it, a swooping breathy noise that he makes whenever he’s excited. 

“Yeah, see, it’s made from wool, from the sheep that are in the next field over. I mashed up some of the grass and tried to dye the blanket that, wasn’t that your favorite color?”

Jay ‘wops’ again, as though confirming Tim’s words. Tim beams and takes the blanket from his hands, smoothing it back over the bear skin that acts as a faux mattress. The attempt at keeping the bed made and presentable is admirable but useless; Jay rips the blanket back out and clambers his way beneath it.

“The sun’s not even down yet,” Tim reminds him to no avail. Jay reaches out to him, crooked fingers waving, beckoning him into the bed. There is food to be caught and cooked, and swords to be practiced with, but Tim can’t say no to that. He makes a good show of resistance, sighing deeply and crossing his arms, but he can’t fight the smile pulling at his lips as he climbs in beside Jay. 

Jay’s arms seem to lengthen out before Tim’s eyes, and they drape around Tim’s waist, cool palms pressing into the small of his back. Black flawless claws scrape patterns into his plaid shirt, reminding Tim of how the wild cats they often found on the road together would knead at him, hungry for attention. He responds now as he responded then: arms around Jay’s neck, he rotates his hand around and scratches at the back of the man’s head. Jay ‘wops’ at him, the sound drawn out and rumbly. 

Tim buries his face in the feather stuffed pillows to conceal his smile. Jay is fucking purring at him. /Purring/. 

“You’re ridiculous,” he murmurs to the other man. As Tim has come to expect, Jay fails to reply to him as a human would, but that’s fine. It’s fine so long as Jay carries on nuzzling his face into Tim’s chest, the chill that resides inside him soothing against his sweat slick skin. A too long, too hot day is lost in Jay’s cool pulse. He smells perfect, of damp new grass and ocean water, salt and sweet. 

Dizzying shadows cross Tim’s vision, and he feels his weight dropping out beneath him. His brain floats and before he can open his eyes and reset the cycle, he’s out. 

It’s a dreamless sleep-- at first. Tim can’t remember a thing the first time he opens his eyes and finds the sun is no longer seeping in through the wall planks. Blue sparks drift above him and Jay, twinkling and shuddering in time with Jay’s breathing. They brush over Tim, massaging his sore muscles and relaxing him to the point of closing his eyes again and sleep drags him back down a second time.

This time--

And, he knows it’s a dream, this isn’t real, Tim is too used to the easy slide of reality into dreams to not realize what’s going on--

This time, though, when he opens his eyes (when he thinks he opens his eyes), he is still in bed, still wrapped in cold. His arms are around a body, Jay’s body, but, it’s a literal body, a corpse, souring the air as it rots before him. Entire pieces of skin are missing from his face, exposing bone, muscle, and blood drips between the folds and stains the brown bear skin black. 

Something wet is pressing against Tim’s stomach, and he doesn’t dare look down, not when he pulls back and the damp substance sticks to him. But he can’t look away forever, it’s either looking into Jay’s broken face or down at his body and--

Blood.

The gunshot wound empties out against him, spurting and painting his clothing a deep crimson, deeper than the plaid Tim wears. He clamps his hand around the crater marring Jay’s stomach, at a loss. It lets out a disgusting squelch and squirts between his fingers, his hand slipping off. 

Tim bolts upright, both in dream and in real life-- but not before catching a glimpse of Jay’s chalky face. 

His eyes are open. Glossy, wide, and staring up at him, a desperate question in his pinpoint pupils.

But, of course they’re closed when Tim comes gasping back to the real world. They aren’t human eyes, they are the clear, bright ones that shine through Jay’s eyelids while he slumbers. There is no blood, no pain, no broken flesh.

Just a single hole that sits adjacent to Jay’s ribcage. 

Tim has noticed it in the past, in passing, but he never thought about it, didn’t want to think about it. He knows exactly what it is, and running his fingers over it oh so carefully serves to confirm his suspicions. While Jay’s new form is smooth to the touch, the skin here is bumpy and ridged, reminding Tim of his ridges, the ones written up and down his arms.

He lays back down, forcing himself to breathe as his first therapist had told him to: in, and out, counting each one, filling his belly up with air. 

Jay doesn’t so much as flinch. Tim has to pinch himself and watch the gentle rhythm of Jay’s breathing to make certain that things are as they ought to be.

Well.

No.

This isn’t anything like it should be.

(This wasn’t supposed to happen.) 

“This isn’t fair on you at all,” Tim breathes out. He draws his fingers along the fins at Jay’s ribcage, emanating a sweet sky blue glow that falters with each breath the man lets out. “You should still be human. You shouldn’t be here. You didn’t do anything to deserve this, no… no matter how bad you might’ve fucked up.”

Even at his angriest, after discovering the Marble Hornets channel and seeing that Jay had shared his fucking life story with an audience comprised of a thousand strangers, he never wished death on Jay. He wanted to hurt him, just as Jay had done to him, and boy, did he hurt him-- that bruise didn’t fade for weeks. 

But for him to die, that never once crossed his mind. 

“I’m sorry,” Tim utters to Jay’s prone body. A shuddery breath presses out from Tim’s chest, and he lays back down, eyes fixed on his strange companion’s slumbering face. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you quick enough. I should’ve moved faster or, or maybe even called on the other guy, they were better at dealing with Alex. But, we both know that, huh.”

Jay’s fins brighten somewhat, as though acknowledging Tim. He shakes his head, a quiet chuckle breaking from his lips.

“I guess it doesn’t matter now, going ‘what if’ over and over again, wondering if I could’ve made it gone differently. What really matters is all the shit I kept from you and didn’t get to tell you before… y’know, that happened.”

His fingers drift over the gaping hole in Jay’s side. No blood. Thank god, no blood.

“Do you remember Jessica? She’s-- she’s okay, you know. I couldn’t tell you before. You would’ve gone looking for her and I knew you’d never be able to live with yourself if she started being stalked again. She’s happy. And she wanted to meet you. She can’t remember you, for whatever reason, but she wanted to meet you and be friends, I think, and I wish I could’ve told her that was possible, but all I said was that you had moved away. At least I know now that I was kind of telling the truth.”

Tim can’t look at Jay anymore. The longer he does it, the harder it becomes to speak, an expanding and painful bubble sitting in his throat and throttling him from the inside. 

“All the others… they’re dead. Seth. Sarah. Amy. Even Brian. I thought, maybe, they might still be out there. But I met Alex one last time, and when I looked at him, I knew he took them out too. I don’t know how. Or where. There’s lots of things I don’t know about all of this. And I’ve learned that I’m never going to find the missing answers. I’m not okay with it, I’m gonna have to be.”  
(He thinks of the hood that Brian wore in death, when his spine snapped like a twig and he was left to the so called wolves.)

(That is going to be Tim’s last secret. Brian deserves to be remembered as the person he was, not the beast he lost himself to.)

“Alex is gone too. I didn’t want to do it. But I had to. He wouldn’t--”

Tim’s voice catches against the bubble in his throat. He remembers his therapist and forces air into his lungs.

“--wouldn’t stop. He wasn’t going to. I didn’t know what else to do.”

He can’t go on beyond that.

The man sits in the silence that resembles the quiet he was left to grapple with before Jay arrived. He didn’t notice it before, but, his cheeks are wet now. No use wiping them off when Jay isn’t awake to see them. They’ll keep coming if he tries, more and more insistent.

Speaking of Jay being asleep.

“Did I really just tell you all this while you couldn’t hear me?” Tim huffs to the ceiling. Indeed, Jay hasn’t stirred at all. His little sparks have come to rest on Tim’s stomach, chilling his skin through his clothing, but besides that, he hasn’t even twitched.

“Figures, fucking figures,” he mumbles to the sparks, reaching to stroke them and make them shudder. “I… I’ll consider this practice. Like talking to your reflection before going out and actually /doing/ the thing. Yeah. That sounds good. We agreed on that?”

He turns his head and looks to his companion. No reply, save for a very low ‘wop’ that Jay utters in lieu of snoring. 

“Yeah,” Tim sighs. “Wop wop. Agreed.”


	4. Honor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To be alone is what Tim believes he deserves. That doesn't mean he has to fucking enjoy being alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for mentions of murder, relapsing (in the form of returning to an old coping method of disassociating, and implication of returning to self harm), and fire, nobody gets hurt by it though.

The next time Tim opens his eyes, Jay is no longer in bed with him.

Before, he would have let go of his senses and traveled for miles searching for him, newly crafted blade in hand. No monster or beast in this realm of possibility stood a chance against him, and by the time the sun was setting again, Jay would be back in his home, /their/ home, safe.

But Tim doesn’t panic. His heart doesn’t kick up and rush off running. He sits up, legs over the side of the bed, and he closes his eyes, counting. 

He must have heard him the night before. All of it, every confession: how he lied to him, what he did to Alex… they’d promised to stop keeping secrets from each other, and what did Tim do? Tim was sure he’d been doing the right thing, keeping both Jay and Jessica away from each other, keeping them safe-- but he could only protect one of them after all. What’s more, Jay never wanted to kill Alex. Once upon a time, a warped and desperate version of Jay might have raised his knife to Tim, but he saw the shaking in his hand, and he fell too easily to have truly wanted to cause him harm.

He never would’ve stood a chance against Alex. Too gentle. Too much faith. 

Tim might not be pleased with Jay’s choice to leave. But maybe he can’t live with somebody who acts as though they can be trusted, only for them to lie about the most important thing in the world to his face and then turn around and become a fucking murderer. If he could’ve avoided these trespasses, Tim would have given them the widest berth possible. 

He thought he was doing what was necessary, and he’d hoped Jay might understand and forgive him for that reason.

Maybe he hoped for too much. And now that he thinks of it, there isn’t much he can do about it either. This world rolls on for miles, miles upon miles. Standing at the top of the mountains nearby proved to Tim that he could never hope to explore this place within the time he has left to live. 

Jay could be in the green pastures that sat at the other side of those mountains, or he’s found a place that Tim can’t possibly hope to reach on foot. The world bends to his will, allowing him to flit to wherever he might see fit, and if Tim thinks he stands a chance at catching him, he’s kidding himself. 

Fine. 

Fine. He can do this. He did it before. He’ll be alone again, as he deserves to be, so he can’t lie anymore or hurt anyone else. 

Tim is used to it. More than he would ever like to admit.

It’s just that his coping methods have never been the best.

\--

it called out to him the moment he awoke.

‘you don’t look so hot there. the house feels empty. is something the matter.’

he ignored it. at first.

he had thrown away the original, like a good boy. bye, down the dumpster it went, in the trash where it fucking belonged along with the rest of his lost and miserable memories.

but he couldn’t stop himself from making another one. there is clay lining the rivers around the house, pliable enough to be excavated by hand. once he had his hands on it, there was no stopping him: he kneaded it flat, and took the ink of the squid he’d met in an ocean that pulses at the sandy dunes not too far from the mountains. his thumbs swiped out familiar black eyes, and a mouth that grinned at him as though it knew he was breaking once again.

after he sat the mask out in the sun to dry, he came to his senses. a rainstorm came barreling through the fields and transformed the dirt to mud, making it a much simpler task to bury the mask. the beastly little thing hasn’t moved since then. 

but now--

he needs it

he needs to hear that voice and know that he isn’t alone for the rest of time

his fingers bleed when he claws through the hardened dirt. red whorls and swirls decorate the mask’s cheeks as he pulls it on, and, he’s going to be okay, because he can go to sleep. he doesn’t have to think anymore. he isn’t the one at the steering wheel.

he’s free.

\--

‘Wop’.

Wop? 

Tim awakens for the second time that day, though the sun is long gone now. He blinks rapidly, chasing the sting from his eyes, and he sits up, hands coming to rest against bear fur. The bed. As though he never got out of bed today at all.

Even though he knows he was outside.

His fingers are prickly and ache as he expected them to. When he lifts his hands out from beneath the woolen blankets, he discovers that they’re wrapped-- he definitely didn’t do that. He has no idea where these bandages could have come from, either; he didn’t bring any with him when he stepped into this peculiar world.

Red-tinged dirt is embedded beneath his fingernails; he really did go outside then. He came back inside for some reason, but for what? Why would he want to be here when this bed makes him think of the cold pulse it’s missing?

‘Wop’.

This time, his waking self properly realizes what it is that stirred him from the darker recesses of his brain. 

He glances across the room, and there by the front door is Jay, aura, long limbs and all, clutching a huge grey chunk of stone. 

Mostly grey, anyway. The man is sitting on the floor and embracing the stone to himself, head bowed over it. His aura is split somewhat at the face, implying a mouth, and when he lifts his head, sapphire blue gunk dribbles down his face. Turning his head, he spits it out to the side, where a great mound of goo is beginning to form. 

Seeing Jay there erases all other coherent thoughts from Tim’s mind; fuck the mask. He clambers out of bed, naked feet slapping on the floor and attracting Jay’s attention. They catch eyes seconds before Tim swings his arms around Jay’s thin neck, his face buried in his shoulder. The stone in his hands topples over, clunking uselessly.

“I’m sorry, a thousand times over, I’m sorry, I just thought I was doing the right thing, I never meant to hurt you--”

Cool hands push Tim back, forcing him to sit up on his knees. Jay gazes down at him, his palms rising to cradle Tim’s face, the blood in his cheeks freezing beneath his touch. A finger rests upon Tim’s lips, shushing him. 

He leans into Jay’s touch without thinking and shuts his eyes. Jay may not be able to speak, but such gentle contact tells him all he needs to know. This is almost for the better; Jay never was the best at speaking, preferring to exchange sidelong glances and write his feelings down instead. He was at his most expressive when working on a new entry, writing out the informational slides that Tim copied when it was his turn to take over the old YouTube account. 

Those wordless evenings spent together prepared him for this. Destiny, fate, it will always fall upon Tim’s ears as complete bullshit, but this is starting to weigh on him and maybe someday he’ll change his mind.

Right now, though, Jay is all he can see and he’s-- warm? His torso is lukewarm against Tim’s, it’s such a stark difference in temperature that his breath catches in his lungs.

“Are you feeling alright?” Tim asks, fighting to keep the panic from his voice. He reaches up and presses on his forehead, checking for a temperature, though Jay quickly moves his hand away, wrapping his fingers around Tim’s wrist. 

Uncurling one finger, he points towards the door, left slightly open by means of a second large stone, huge hunks of it missing, presumably bitten up already. Tim smells it before he catches sight of the source of the heat: a mound of burning coal, surrounded by a number of tiny rocks to keep the flames contained. Sitting in the center of it is a white oval, though not quite as white as it was before-- it’s more grey now, nearing black.

The mask.

Looking at it, Tim finds his mind is suddenly much clearer, and he taps into his shaky memory. Hardly anything is left for him to pick apart, but he can see Jay here with him, the air shimmering to announce his return. He took one look at Tim, having just pulled on the mask, and his shrouded face shred itself apart, revealing the teeth that had sunk into those zombies that one peculiar morning long ago. 

Beyond that, Tim sees dreamless sleep, leading up to this moment here. Color trickles into his face. Jay saw him like that, he saw he was weak and couldn’t help giving in. He-- no, he wasn’t weak, it’s a relapse, everybody has relapses and they’re not weak for them. If Jay were to show up to him, somehow still human, bearing fresh new scars to show off, Tim wouldn’t call him weak, and.

And he’s saying this out loud. He can’t recall where he began to spout all of his thoughts out like a leaky water faucet, but Jay isn’t teleporting away from him or gazing elsewhere as though ignoring him. Instead, his eyes are scrunched up, a smile hidden beneath the aura. 

If he could, Tim has a feeling Jay would be laughing at him. This isn’t like him at all and Tim would say he dislikes it, if Jay wasn’t handling him this gently throughout. 

In a show of strength that Tim didn’t think was possible, Jay sweeps his arms beneath his form and gathers him up, looping them twice over his legs. Is it just him, or is Jay getting longer, taller, with a greater number of sparkles drifting around him? Or did Jay fuck with his head more than he meant to?

He’s back in bed before he knows it, a tender hand stroking through his greasy hair, oh, he’s a fucking mess, he didn’t get the chance to take care of the sweat and grime after working the entirety of the previous day, and Jay doesn’t care. Those eyes stare, endless but grinning, and they remain imprinted upon Tim’s vision when Jay walks away.

The blue gunk continues to pile up while Tim lies awake, breathing evenly, recovering from the constant buzz in his skull. He acts as an audience to Jay’s strange work, which continues to make no sense to him up until Jay drags the goo outside and shapes it like a rectangle, rounding out the top two corners until they’re smooth. 

Tim knows what it is, he /thinks/ he knows, but he doesn’t know for sure until Jay takes a stick and sketches out several names in the gradually hardening structure.

Seth. Sarah. Amy. Brian. Alex. 

In the past, Tim has thought of how inappropriate it is for his long gone friends not to have graves. Jay got one, thank god-- he still has the suit he wore to the funeral, has the jacket laying in a rumpled pile on the second floor, untouched for months.

And now, his friends have one too, because Jay was too kind to let them go without.

That’s what lets Tim sleep, this peace in knowing that at least he and Jay will never forget those that were lost and never take one another for granted again.

**Author's Note:**

> For reference, yes, Jay was an Enderman, based on my theory that they are dead people and well tbh it's the MH universe so if you're expecting answers you're fucked.


End file.
